Romeo Is Bleeding Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES
The story of a cop who wanted it bad and got it worse.
A corrupt New York police officer's double life as a witness protection guard, and as a mafia informant, begins to catch up with him when he's bribed to kill a deadly female Russian assassin in custody while keeping his lifestyle a secret from both his wife and teenage mistress.
| Gary Oldman | Jack |
| Wallace Wood | Waiter |
| Juliette Lewis | Sheri |
| David Proval | Scully |
| Will Patton | Martie |
| Gene Canfield | John |
| Larry Joshua | Joey |
| Michael Wincott | Sal |
| Lena Olin | Mona |
| William Duff-Griffin | Paddy |
| James Cromwell | Cage |
| Paul Butler | Skouras |
| Annabella Sciorra | Natalie |
| Tony Sirico | Malacci |
| Victoria Bastel | Girl #1 |
| Peter Medak |
6.20 out of 10 (5217 votes)
Visitor Reviews
Excellent Modern Noir
posted on 24 Aug 2009I loved this film. Mostly for the acting, but the story line is compelling and you can feel for even the most rotten of people.This story is a great callback to the Film Noirs of classical film times. Gary Oldman does an incredible job, one of his best IMO, as the corrupt cop, Jack Grimaldi.Lena Olin is one of the most deadly women on the planet...if you see her, run.If all this isn't enough, GO is hot as anything in his role.So rent it for that if you hate Noir but love Oldman.Cheers and happy viewings.
Solid And Curiously Touching Modern Noir
posted on 14 Apr 2009ROMEO IS BLEEDING is a fascinating and unusual hybrid of highly personalized old fashioned 40s noir and ultra-violent stylized 90s crime drama. It's the kind of movie they never make anymore, with an unappealing protagonist, an entirely corrupt universe where justice and virtue won't triumph and a heartbreaking ending which basically guaranteed it would never be a commercial hit. Obviously some were put off by these things, accounting for the low rating this sleeper minor masterpiece has. Bur that's part of why I love it!While there is significant "man's man" violence and the obvious titillation from Lena Olin, this movie is at its heart a pure noir cautionary tale with careful structuring designed to get us to the amazingly powerful payoff, which tops all. The writer (Hilary Henkin) is obviously knowledgeable about her 40s and 50s hard boiled repertoire and fills ROMEO with references and touches which students of the genre will enjoy.But the center of this movie is Gary Oldman. His blisteringly desperate performance as a corrupt cop at the end of the long slide to oblivion defines the movie and is both hypnotic and disturbing. His voiceovers are a worthy throwback to the old Raymond Chandler raps voiced by Bogart or Dick Powell or Robert Montgomery. Lena Olin is at her menacing best; this is surely the role which landed her the gig as Sydney's subtly venomous mother in ALIAS, and she takes full advantage of the over-the-top femme fatale characterization with deadly verve. Oldman and Olin share a bizarre chemistry which is fortunate for the script, because Olin's repeated seductions of Oldman when he basically knows she is luring him to his doom would never have worked if the actors didn't bring it to life on the screen.There aren't a lot of actresses who can out-menace Gary Oldman but Lena Olin absolutely pulls it off.ROMEO IS BLEEDING is not perfect. Roy Scheider's mafioso character is strangely caricatured and sticks out in a world otherwise occupied by three dimensional players. Scheider tries hard, too, which is a shame because it's just not there in the role. Lena Olin's brazen escape from police custody defies plausibility in the extreme. Gary Oldman is seemingly not quite properly motivated at all times. Nevertheless, the searing denouement to this movie burns all of these concerns away because it is one of the most unexpectedly poignant and heartrending in the last quarter century of noir. If you have a pulse, you will well up at the end, and probably think about a longing that you left behind at some point in your life against your wishes. 9 / 10
You Can Dig One Grave, Or You Can Dig Two...
posted on 18 Dec 2008One of my favorite lines from "Romeo Is Bleeding," an overlooked tribute to film noir. Jack Grimaldi(Oldman)is a crooked cop that rats info to the mob about the whereabouts of mob witnesses. He is also a louse of a husband, cheating on his wife(Sciorra)with a waitress (Lewis). Life, in his view, is good, especially when he gets the money from the mob, which he uses "To feed the hole" in his backyard. Then, one day, his life slowly goes on a descent to hell when he is assigned to watch over the deliciously wicked Mona(Lena Olin, who should have gotten an Oscar nod for this performance). Mona makes a proposition to Jack: Help her fake her death and he will be paid VERY well. The problem is that the mob, led by Roy Scheider, wants Jack to wipe her out, or they will wipe him out. What happens to the characters in this film is what makes this a very intense film. The scenes between Olin and Oldman are hot enough to burn a hole in your television screen. This is a must see film that you have to have in your collection.
If you're not a police officer, DON'T READ!
posted on 12 Dec 2008Big city police officers with basement-filth addictions will identify with much of this masterpiece. I did."Jack" has a problem; Money and Sex. When he's not getting enough of one, he seeks way too much of the other. Jack had big dreams. And, he was doing something about those dreams. Everything was going great, until one day...everything started going wrong. You see, there's not much future in playing four sides against the middle. Especially when the four sides include a mobster, an opposing mobster (a female sex-goddess), a beautiful supporting loving wife, and a super-hot luscious girlfriend. Jack is not just bleeding...he's hemorraging!If you're a police officer, this In-Service Training Film is a requirement! WARNING: HAVE DRINK IN HAND WHEN VIEWINGLike Jack says, "Hell...is when you should have walked away, and didn't". Good Luck!
A one of a kind surprise.
posted on 03 Nov 2008A dishonest cop only wants to live like the filthy rich but pays a high price for it as he tangles up with the wrong crowd. Oldman's performance makes it hard to take your eyes off him while Medak's direction supplies the wild ride to hell that is worth taking.
A case of delinquent morals and misguided affections
posted on 22 Oct 2008***************Contains spoilers*******************Perhaps the darkest of Oldman's roles. A fine pair of acting and directing make You actually cringe with anticipation and fear. You want so badly to direct the lead character to a clear path. His direction is self paved as a crooked cop who dabbles with organized crime, a thoughtless husband, careless lover, and a crooked dancer high on greed low on concern. It is hard to imagine that such a person as the films early unconcerned character exists. There are stylish scenes on rooftops, amusement parks, cheap hotels, backyards and even a back room of a bar. If that person does in fact exist Oldman depicted him vividly. The most important moment of the film for me was one in which Romeo is secretly dictating a love letter while in grave danger of his life, and even then he manages to create extraordinary lies and unbelievable denial. In addition to being a dark noir piece there is a horror story, and a morality play hidden within the dark images and brash dialogues. This is not a film for everyone, there is a barrage of violence and anger stewing. There is some impure romance in this movie but, it is not at all a love story.
Lena Olin Shines!
posted on 04 Oct 2008Lena Olin gives the best performance of any actress cast in the role of a villain with Theresa Russell in The Black Widow running a close second. It's one of the few times where a woman is shown as being just as evil and back stabbing as the men, instead of the standard whore, mistress, or long suffering wife. Normally one has to look to Hong Kong to find strong female leads older than 30. This movie is a must have for any fan of Mafia drama. On a personal note, if anyone has worked behind the scenes of this film, I'd love to know what model revolver Ms. Olin used on the set. BUY THIS FILM!
Calendar mistake !
posted on 10 Sep 2008Well, May 1st and December 1st ARE NOT "every six months", as been said many times along the movie ! Apart from that, there are lot of irrational developments and non-understandable small details, so many turns of the story just don't make sense. Lot of blood, temptation sounds and "Penny-worth philosophy" don't make a film. Most of the figures' voices are unbearable, probably done so on purpose "for the right atmosphere" but the result is unpleasant for the spectator. What's more - Roy Sheider's performance is really not to standard. Other characters are doing just fine (It is not her fault, but Swedish actress is NOT a Russian one - why not cast the original ?).
My Second Favourite Movie!
posted on 04 Sep 2008Romeo Is Bleeding is an excellent film. It is Number 2 on my all time favourite list. Number 1 is "Midnight Run". Why doI like it? It has a great performance by Gary Oldman, (from Sid and Nancy and Track 29). I became a big fan of Oldman and watched everything I could get my hands on by this guy! The direction is first rate by British master Peter Medak (Let Him Have It and Ponatiac Moon) and a very moody jazz score by the talented Mark Isham! I also own the soundtrack. Dariusz Wolski did amazing cinematography on this one. He would later go on to do Dark City and The Mexican. So yeah, a good crew and a great cast, what can I say? Other kudos must go out to the beautiful women in this, Lena Olen and Juliette Lewis are breathtaking in this. And the sex scenes are pretty steamy.....for me anyway. Some light B&D in this. Scrited by Hillary Henken (Roadhouse and Wag the Dog) and a nice character by Michael Wincott.....he says "HEY YOU GOTTA GIVE ME SOMETHING,....(to a stranger) WHAT THE @&^#! ARE YOU LOOKIN' AT?!" Best line hands down: Do you know what is so scary about love? It's that you don't own it. IT OWNS YOU!! That line has a lot of truth, for me. So rent it if you wanna see something dark, edgy, and independent! Thank ya!
A grand neo-noir
posted on 26 Aug 2008I can never remember that this movie is as recent as it is, because it feels to me like a mid-80's neo noir rather than a mid-90's noir. I think that's a good thing. YMMV.Gary Oldman does some of his better work in this movie, but Lena Olin Rocks My World. She is WAY beyond bad, and there is more than a little sex in her violence. There are some great plot twists along the way, and the tone reeks of the emptiness of American life.There's voiceovers, long shots of The Big Empty, and Williamsburg Brooklyn before gentrification. What more could you want?
Romeo is Bleeding...and this film doesn't help!!!
posted on 24 Jul 2008I regret spending several hours watching this film. How could anyone call this movie superb? It was more like a spoof than a serious bad cop vs. deadly woman gangster film. The acting was very good but the story was ridiculous. Probably the most absurd scene was Mona appearing with the "replacement" arm in place of her real arm. Did she cut it off all by herself with a chain saw, then bind and treat it with one arm? And their love scene..."Do you want it with or without?" Give me a break!!!How could anyone take this movie seriously? And what about Jack's mistress Sheri? He apparently didn't care that he shot her then left her body hanging from the wall. And, I didn't get the love story between Natalie and Jack. He seemed to love every woman he came across...and his wife knew he was a womanizer and just a convenient partner. I think this film started out as a thriller...then the writer ran out of a storyline and didn't know how to finish it. What a misuse of good actors. Don't waste your time watching it.
All's Fair in Love and War
posted on 24 Jun 2008"Feed the hole" "Feed the hole" "Feed the hole".... Romeo suffers from the Madonna-whore complex big time.... wifey gets no lovin... girlfriends get the limp noodle... sexual transference to a hole in the back yard stuffed with cash....Let's all pray that Viagra doesn't end the great american male sexual inadequacy tradition we have throughout every decent movie ever made. What the hell are we going to have as motivation for our male protagonists? Are they all going to stay at home now slipping it to wifey and playing bridge with the neighbors? That rough voice dude wasn't kidding when he said "it's the fall of Rome out there". I don't care what Tacitus says, Yohimbe killed the Empire.
Missteps, every step of the way.
posted on 15 Jun 2008Open to the present, the story, to be told in reflection, jazz in the background, narration in the foreground. These days, this is the sort of composition left to late-night cable erotic thrillers. The HVAC man in suburbia, with a good wife, and family at home, he meets the rich, much younger wife on the job in the hills.Sadly the filmmakers won't stay down where they belong with this uninventive jive. They dress it up with a name brand cast (Gary Oldman, Lena Olin), and cut back just enough on the explicit sex to let you know this is not exploitation. Still in doubt? Toss in Juliette Lewis, salt-peter in human form. They think this is a main stream movie, a little legerdemain over an unsuspecting and gullible audience, a clever approach to psuedo-noir, a psychological thriller.Missing a key element? Throw in lots of off-color language and yelling to replace lack of story, or lack clever dialogue, or lack of plot. Seems I've seen this somewhere before, 'Roadhouse'? Are you listening Hillary?Could you turn up that jazz a bit?This is not Pleasantville, or even Cop Land....it's strictly Amateur City.
Some great scenes, but sometimes it's just too much
posted on 31 May 2008A dark thriller with a hopelessness at its core that eats away at you the same way it does with Oldman. At one point his character says "All I could think about was feed the hole, feed the hole..." That hole represents his own private Hell, one that he created and he is perpetuating - but as long as things are going smoothly, if badly, things are OK.One great, great scene is where Oldman casually sets his gun down on the kitchen table and Sciorra - sadly, in too small a role - picks it up and points it at him. The look on his face is priceless.This movie has the same ethos as "Bad Lieutenant", but doesn't have that movie's crushing, personally wretched banality. It's also not quite as shocking or intense. Instead, it uses its main character's arrogance and sadistic tendencies as "fatal flaws" which ultimately help to bring down an otherwise quasi-noble guy.I liked this movie up to a point, but sometimes it feels like I'm being manipulated - shown something shocking just for the sake of it being shocking. Like the scene with Olin and Oldman in the car that is excerpted at the beginning. A lot of that is just unnecessary. It's supposed to help set the tone, but by this time the tone has already been set - these are both desperate characters with a lot to lose and little to gain.
A flamboyant, ghoulish 21st century gangster western.
posted on 25 Apr 2008The most original contemporary film where a female dominates the action in such a grotesque and inhumane way leaving the viewer unsure of what he has seen; and not just once, but several times. It is a 21st century western that could have never been made in the 40's or even 50's. The closest strength which drive Lena Olin I can only recall in Spencer Tracy's performance in BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, except he was a protagonist, whereby, Olin is the personification of pure guile and without any apparent soul. She is sexy, tough, and steady and always sure of herself. Having seen it several times, I cannot imagine any actress except, perhaps the young Joan Crawford being able to pull the part off, except she might not have had the brazen sexual passion which makes one almost fear Olin...Crawford would mainly had the drive she showed in the campy JOHNNY GUITAR. This film is so ghoulish and wicked that I doubt that even most adults should avoid it if they haven't the stomach to watch pure evil portrayed with absolute conviction.
Ages badly
posted on 07 Apr 2008Policeman Jack Grimaldi (Gary Oldman) gets involved with seriously disturbed assassin Mona Demarkov (Lena Olin).That's about all I'll say--the plot is VERY convoluted. I saw this in a theatre in 1993. I was pretty impressed. Seeing it 11 years later I'm not.
What looked inventive in 1993 has been done since...and better. This now comes off as an amoral, sleazy, very bloody, very violent and (surprisingly) tedious movie. There's not one likable character in this--I hated everybody. The jazz score got on my nerves quickly and the pointless nudity and extreme violence just annoyed me.The acting is pretty good. Oldman is excellent (as always) faking a credible American accent. Juliette Lewis is pretty lousy as his mistress--but then, she's never good. Poor Annabella Sciorra isn't given enough to do as his wife--but she IS great. And Roy Scheider is VERY good as the big crime boss. But it's Olin who steals the movie. Her performance is WAY over the top--she's totally ruthless, incredibly sexy and goes full force all through the movie. I'm really surprised her performance didn't get more attention back in '93. The movie just came and went pretty quickly.I'm giving it a 6...mostly for the acting. It plays like a Quentin Tarantino/film noir cross--a BAD one!
Part Two of the Gary Oldman Double Feature
posted on 22 Feb 2008Right after the Professional. A quite sick and sadistic tale of a talented cop gone horribly bad and the woman he is obsessed with. Oldman plays a detective named Jack Grimaldi who sells out witnesses to the Mob but meets his match when he attempts to sell out Mona Demarkov, a Russian hit woman who is as clever and dangerous as she is gorgeous. Grimaldi must find and kill Mona or a mob boss will kill him. This film had a great supporting cast and an unusual ending. Also look for Dennis Farina as a Mafia killer turned stool pigeon. You can't see him clearly but his voice is unmistakable. The violence is shocking but what do you expect from a crime movie I would have been disappointed if there hadn't been. Nudity is kept to a minimum. Definitely worth watching.
whoever contributed to giving this masterpiece a 6.2 must think Philistine is a country!
posted on 04 Feb 2008I never usually write on these forums but such a low score for what I consider to be a masterpiece of acting and film-making compelled me to express my opinion.I must admit that I have always preferred films which are narrated (if you note the success of the Shawshank redemption, it is obvious that I am not alone in this) and 'Romeo is Bleeding' is no exception! The acting (in my humble opinion (i never attended film school and didn't take a degree in media studies)) is absolutely fantastic (Gary Oldman can do no wrong) and the storyline is both engrossing and compelling. The film has every element which I crave, both a story to die for and the most powerful characters to ever bring homicidal mania to the screen. The end result is a roller-coaster of a movie portraying the inevitable emotional and spiritual demise of those who sell their soul for temporary material and physical gratification. The most important message I inferred from this movie is, if you are lucky enough to find true love in this life, then treasure it and protect it with your entire being. Once you have it and lose it, the worthlessness of your existence will only be compounded by its loss, and your life will be a metaphorical tumbleweed cast adrift in a desolate desert of despair.F*ckin great movie tho - 10/10
sometimes, she stays a little longer
posted on 09 Jun 2007Revisiting Romeo is Bleeding after a number of years, I was struck by what still works, what doesn't, and how wonderful endings allow us to overlook any number of faults that lead up to them.Gary Oldman is Jack, a corrupt DS well-loved by his men looking to build an ill-gotten nest egg towards early retirement. And on one level it is all going so well, except enough is never enough, and he just can't leave the ladies alone.Enter Mona (Lena Olin), a femme fatale who manages to inhabit both the femme and the fatale completely. The cop in Jack knows to cuff her, lock her up, and throw away the key, but the Jack in Jack has another agenda.Romeo is Bleeding is every frame a modern noir thriller, made great by Hilary Henkin's script exhibiting detailed reverence for the genre, and some unparalleled performances by the actors. Oldman is breath-taking, cynical and world-weary delivering his Marlowe-style quips, raw and vulnerable reaching crescendo when he puts a gun barrel in his mouth. It would be too much to ask his co-stars to outshine him, but they certainly keep up. Olin produces a nightmarish laugh at the most inappropriate times, and Juliette Lewis's cocktail waitress (what else?) Sheri's innocence is perfectly ignorant, far too ignorant to survive in this brutal arena. Annabella Sciorra as Natalie completes the trio of Jack's women, his not-so-unaware wife. She is not as cold-hearted towards Jack as Mona, not as infatuated as Sheri, but her flawed love contains a bit of both. She points a gun at him, and we know she knows. Sitting on the porch they have one of those oblique conversations only old married couples know, where every utterance is sub-text, and restraint and feigned ignorance are the name of the game. Jack never quite gets to grips with her, and that is to be his ultimate tragedy.There are hints of Chandler here (the letter to Jack from The Boys), and Chinatown, too, most noticeably in the bloodied, deformed demeanor of the protagonist in the final third, but Romeo is Bleeding is a stylish noir piece that acknowledges its antecedents without racking up debts.And then there is the ending, of such heartbreaking, poignant beauty, Oldman and Sciorra pitch-perfect, deftly shot and edited, a wave you ride and crash on shore with. Startling, stunning, and yet how could this tale have ended otherwise? "Sometimes, she stays a little longer. And then she's gone." Not a perfect film, but a perfect ending, and I'll take that every time.
Oldman Is Bleeding
posted on 24 Aug 2009A must see...! It's truly a man's world, about usual guy who's willing to take everything for himself. Real typical man.The story is much basic, but the casts are perfect. Gary Oldman is at his best, combined with Anabella Sciorra's innocent and lovely looks, Juliette Lewis' child-lazy acts, and Gena Olin's violent acts, this movie finally make it's shots.The ending, although I've seen it in some Hong Kong movie, is still much original. Very strong and gripping...Watch this movie with your spouse... he..he..he..